Wild animal translocations: animal welfare risk assessment guidance

5. How should this be done?

The wild animal welfare risk assessment proposed here is based on a set of nine questions that should be answered by the practitioners undertaking the wild animal translocation. Some of these are already covered by existing licensing requirements. For example, in Question 1, much of this information will have been provided when considering the overall ecological feasibility of the proposal. Nonetheless, the issues impact on animal welfare too. Some existing guidance refers to “good” or “best” practice in this area, but since many wild animal translocations are novel, this is not always available. Wild animal welfare assessments should be made prior to any project commencing and repeated in the light of project progress, if conditions change, or to assess the current level of human responsibility. The process could be linked with a structured decision-making framework, as advocated by Harrington et al. (2022). It should be pointed out that in any restoration or rewilding process involving animals, a number of overarching ethical issues need to first be considered, such as the ten steps for “reintroduction ethics” proposed by Thulin and Röcklinsberg (2020). Here we focus specifically on animal welfare.